


Promise Me

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Angst?, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2053200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After growing up in a sealed vault, you'd think she would have a little less wanderlust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promise Me

“Hey, Charon. Welcome back.” Sheriff Simms greets.

The ghoul doesn’t even look his way, makes a sharp right and hikes the steps to the Wander-... his house.

“Good evening, sir!” Wadsworth greets heartily. Charon doesn’t respond. He heads up to his room, the bedroom Erin gave to him when she bought that ridiculous heart-shaped bed in the middle of the downstairs floor. She said she was too lazy to go up stairs after long days in the Wastes. Charon tries not to think about how much she complained he would get sore joints from sleeping in the armchair. Charon tries not to think about her at all.

He takes a shot of whiskey left out on his desk, and counts out the caps he got scavenging and selling today. Sixty percent goes back in his pocket, and forty in the file cabinet; that’s how the Wanderer always split the profits between them. He used to keep that stash for when she got back, but he guesses this is his savings, now. There’s a sharp point of rage in his gut every time he thinks about how long she’s been gone, that _hypocrite...!_

He takes another shot, and another, and maybe another, and does a great job of not thinking about it. When he falls asleep, he dreams of it, anyway.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They’re sitting on the second floor of the demolished side of Springvale Elementary. Charon’s putting the whiskey they found to good use, while Erin has a warm Nuka-Cola in hand. She glances at her Pip-Boy, then back at the moon, low in the radiation-fogged sky. “Three am.” she says, like that means anything. Charon lives off her sleep cycle, and her sleep cycle is daylight. She inhales for a long time. “You ever wonder what’s out there?”

“Where?”

“West.” she says, scratching behind Dogmeat’s ear, casual, like she hasn’t been dreaming of it since she left the Vault, and looked around, and didn’t see a single wall. “It’s a big Wasteland. I’ve seen some crazy shit, but man...! The Capitol’s huge, but it’s not even a speck.”

“It is none of my concern. I do not plan to leave the Capitol.”

“I do.” Erin sighs. Charon stares at her as she sucks down what’s left of her cola, sets the empty bottle on the ledge, and slides off, dropping to the dust below. She cracks her neck and ruffles her greasy brown hair. “I do.”

Charon corks the whiskey and sets it next to him. “You speak of the near future.”

“Soon.” the girl says, just a girl, just a twenty-year-old orphan who pays people to stand behind her because she’s afraid of being alone. Dogmeat stands, stretches, and races down the steps after her.

“Define “soon”.”

She scratches the back of her neck and shrugs with one hand. “Like... tonight?”

Charon hops down as well, taking tentative steps toward her. She matches him in reverse, backing away. “ _Tonight?_ ”

There’s a scab on her lip from how much she chews it, and she’s chewing on that, now. She nods, erratically, childish. “Tonight.”

His stance shifts a little lower as he backs her into the locker bay. It’s written on her face, she can’t tell if he’s trying to look smaller and less intimidating, get closer and comfort, or preparing to pounce. He doesn’t know, either. He stops, straightens up and sets his shoulders (relaxed or bigger?), trying not to look her in the eye. He doesn’t know what she’ll see. His voice is tight. “Where?”

She shrugs, nudges a tin can with her foot. “I want to see the Pacific.”

“The other side of the continent? You do realize we live in a nuclear Wasteland, right?”

Her eyes can’t settle as she shoves her fists in her pockets (where she keeps a pair of spiked knuckles), flicking from his own balled fists, to the stock of the shotgun over his shoulder, the open space to his left, his feet, right. “I’ve heard it literally glows with radiation.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” he says, half of him thinking _really, why should I care?_ and the other half muttering _her father just died, she’s just a kid,_ because he was there when she found him again, and he was there to see the grime wash from her face and the hardass out of her spine when he said he was proud, and there for James to ask _“Please take care of my little girl”_ , and there, in the rotunda, he dragged her away from James’s corpse, screaming, kicking, sobbing, begging _“Let me die!”_ “Is this another fucking suicide mission?”

She wets her lips, shrugs again. Eyes the shotgun, tries to make the glance to his right, traced around the corner, mapping an escape route- inconspicuous. He steps closer to narrow the gap. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.” she says with more conviction than anything to come out of her mouth all day.

“Why not?” he growls. He fails at trying not to sound offended. The dog trots up from behind them and sits at her heel.

She pulls her hands out of her pockets and swiftly folds them up under her crossed arms; Charon doesn’t miss the flash of moonlight off the spiked knuckles. “Three Dog’s always calling me the Lone Wanderer. It’s about time I lived up to it.”

Charon’s angry again, moving forward vaguely, and there’s a flash of panic in the vaultie’s eyes as her back hits wall. “Fuck Three Dog!”

Dogmeat growls, and Erin shushes him. His ears stay flat, teeth bared, but he stays quiet. “This is important to me. I-I can’t take another day of everyone congratulating me for completing my dad’s life’s work when... when the life’s over, too...” She drops the unarmed weapon in her pockets and wilts slightly. “...I have to get out of here.”

He closes the distance between them then, and she tenses. He’s not really the touchy-feely sort (never used to be, even before the thought of physical contact with him made people sick), but Erin most certainly is, and there’s never a good time to get all sentimental in his mind, but he thinks this is as close as it’s gonna come. She’s a good height, he thinks, just right to put her head on his chest and still feel small. He doesn’t really know what to do with his hands, so he places them on the back of her jacket where dropping flakes of skin won’t be noticed.

“I’m gonna miss you.” she sighs. Charon doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t let go. Doesn’t let go until she does. She takes forever at it, too. “Don’t get yourself killed, okay?”

“I will do my best.”

“No. Promise me.” Erin pulls away, and looks him in the clouded eyes. Hers are the same colour his used to be.

“I promise.”

She nods, and waves for Dogmeat to follow as she rounds the corner. “Hey!” Charon calls, catching sight of her one last time, the pallor of her skin preserved by only coming out like this, at night. It makes the purple under her eyes look darker. “You’ll come back.” Charon says, and swallows. “Promise me.”

She smiles vaguely. “Promise.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Charon wakes up way too early. He’s still used to living off minimal sleep from his employ under Ahzrukhal, though, and doesn’t think much of it.

There’s a bang downstairs. He takes his shotgun.

He takes aim at the figure rifling through one of the lockers, facing away so all he sees in the dark of _“Why-am-I-up-before-the-sun?_ ” is the outline of thick jacket, the stock of a rifle peeking over the intruder’s back. “What are you doing in my house?”

She turns, and smiles at him. “I hope you aren’t planning on shooting that in here. There’s enough holes in the walls as-is.”

It’s been six years, and that’s the first thing she has to say to him. It’s been six years, and he’s wearing boxers and an undershirt, at dark-o’-clock, somewhere between drunk and hungover, and _that’s_ the first thing he says to her. The second thing is, “What time is it?”

She glances at the Pip-Boy on her arm. “Four.”

 _Yeah_ , Charon thinks, _that’s Erin._


End file.
